The Blood of Crows (46 page)

‘Don’t ask. You’d only get nightmares. Let’s just say, when you find him he’ll have fewer than nine fingers.’

‘Libby, you are a scary young woman. You are Pauline McGregor’s daughter?’

‘Indeed. My mum and Mo O’Donnell tried to stop the turf wars years back. When she was stabbed, Costello was there. She called the paramedics and they kept Mum going until she got to hospital and they got me out. She was then allowed to die. That’s how the story was told to me. And I wanted Costello to be there, at the start of it all. It was good Howlett found her.’

‘So, you knew she was a cop all along?’

‘Of course I did.’ Libby turned to look out of the window. ‘Do you know that Robert the Bruce was born by caesarean after his mother was killed? She broke her neck falling off her horse. I like that story.’ She smiled. ‘He went on to great things. And so shall I.’

Then Anderson asked, ‘And Richard Spence is Archie O’Donnell’s son?’

‘Yes. His dad chopped the head off the man who ordered the hit on my mother – he never got the hitman, though, contrary to popluar belief. It’s a bond of sorts. Not traditional – but it’s something, I suppose. Richie and I were at Glen Fruin Academy together since we were twelve years old. He had no father, and I had no parents at all. Like I say, it’s the sort of thing that creates a bond when you’re that age.’

There was a pause while Libby took out a packet of cigarettes, lit one, opened the window and blew a plume of smoke away from Anderson.

‘Modern Romeo and Juliet, eh? We have the “civil blood”, only we’re not for dying young.’

‘But what the hell was Richie doing, getting that close to the Russians?’

‘Know your enemy, DCI Anderson, know your enemy.’

‘Richie nearly died. You do know that?’

‘Yes, I do. But he’ll mend. He will,’ she insisted, almost fiercely. ‘We worked out that the only way to destroy the Russians was from the inside. We had our own name for it – the end of days.’ She looked out of the window, her eyes scanning the river. ‘That was where you found the wee girl, wasn’t it, down there?’ For a moment her gaze was grave
and sympathetic. Then she took up her narrative briskly. ‘So, one of us would have to work our way into the organization, like a Trojan horse. We realized it would involve sex, whether we liked it or not, and we probably wouldn’t. I was prepared to do it, to take the risk. But look at me – I’m just a fat girl with bad skin. I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes – not worth keeping alive. But Richie – well, you know how beautiful he was, before they …’

Anderson was touched by the tenderness in her voice. ‘He’ll mend. You said it.’

‘But he’ll never be that beautiful again. Anyway, Richie started running errands, obeying orders, that sort of thing. Then Melinda Biggart moved in on him. The woman was grotesque, but it was a huge opportunity. Actually,’ Libby corrected herself, ‘he quite liked her. She was pissed off with her perv of a husband, and all alone in her grand house. You’ve seen that place, haven’t you?’

Anderson nodded, and Libby took a deep draw on her cigarette.

‘Yeah, if it hadn’t been for the sex, Richie said, she could be good fun. Liked a laugh. But then Biggart made a move on him too. And that was no fun. But he did it, for weeks, until he found out that Biggart was making those films at the Apollo Building, that two wee girls had already died and that there was a third one and it was her turn. He couldn’t let that happen, so he torched Biggart’s place, and made damn sure Biggart got torched too. Grusov guessed it was Richie who’d done it, and they … they …’ She took a deep shuddering breath, fighting to keep her tears under control. ‘They tortured him. He never said a thing, though – otherwise I wouldn’t be alive to have this conversation.’

‘I know,’ Anderson said, and patted her hand before realizing what he’d done.

She smiled at him, the steely glint gone for a moment. ‘He went through all that for me.’ Libby threw the end of her cigarette out of the window, and turned to look earnestly at Anderson. ‘But the wee girl died anyway. So, I’m more determined than ever, for Richie and for her, that it won’t happen again.’

‘How can you stop it?’ wondered Anderson.

‘We have stopped it. Didn’t you notice? Three generations of O’Donnells have put a stop to Morosov’s trafficking in underage girls, and to his little snuff movie sideline.’

‘Did you get Fairbairn out of jail just so you could kill him? Was the lawyer involved from the start?’

‘Of course.’ She said it dismissively, as though Anderson had asked a silly question. ‘Wee Archie sorted it from the inside, Auld Archie on the outside. We did it so you could kill him, if you chose to.’ She continued to look out of the window. ‘We are gradually cutting off the supply of red heroin, chasing the dealers out. Shoot a few more in the head, they soon learn it’s too dangerous to touch.’

‘The Balfron three?’

Libby nodded. ‘Rosie MacFadyean isn’t the only one with a good strategic brain. Try five minutes with Auld Archie O’Donnell! If you ever want to hide, go and live in an old folks’ home – you become bloody invisible. Oh, don’t look at me like that. You guys couldn’t have done what we did. The police have to fight by the rules, which means they’ll never win the war. But we don’t. Violence needs to be fought with violence.’

‘What if another Morosov appears?’

‘We’ll deal with that as well. Think of us as a public service, we keep the city clean.’

‘Why not just go to university, Libby? You’re a clever girl. Why do this?’

‘What could university teach me? The only way to save this city is our way. It’s in my blood. It’s my birthright, and it needs to be done.’

‘Libby, you’ll be dead within a year, you know that.’

‘The only hope we have is no hope. It makes us invincible.’

Anderson thought about that for a moment.

‘We’re both after justice, you and I,’ Libby went on. ‘We’d both like to keep the peace. The difference is that no one’s going to mess with me.’

‘Even so, I’d rather do it my way.’

‘Of course you would. You do your paperwork and get to the Rusalkas of the world too late to save them. We’ll get on with killing the bastards who do it.’

Anderson almost laughed. ‘And you think you can hold both factions together? With their history?’

‘Just watch us. We tried it before and only failed because bent cops took the Marchetti kid. That was the start of the civil war, just the way they wanted it to happen. And that’s another case we’ve closed for you. Took us months of searching down holes and drains at the top end of the glen to find where he’d been all these years. Though we had help,’ she said enigmatically.

The car drew to a halt and Anderson realized with a shock that he was outside his own house.

‘Here you are, safe and sound, as promised,’ said Libby. ‘Thank you for your time, DCI Anderson.’

The large man got out and opened the rear door, and Anderson got out too. He leaned down to talk through the open window.

‘Thanks for the information about the girls, Libby. But promise me you’ll be careful. There’ll always be someone who thinks they can mess with you and get away with it.’

‘Well, they’ll learn better, won’t they?’

Anderson started up his own driveway, and heard Nesbitt barking behind the door.

Libby was right – anyone who messed with her would come off worse. ‘Even you, you daft wee bugger,’ he said to the dog.

Tuesday

6 July 2010

11.00 A.M.

Anderson drove to the very top of the glen, pulled the car over and killed the engine. He got out and leaned against the door, gazing out over the beauty of Glen Fruin lying at his feet, and thought about those closest to him. Lambie was gone. Costello was ready to take on the world – although Pettigrew had proved that all you need do to make her do as she was told was point a gun at her. Helena had texted to say she had broken up with Gilfillan and was going to buy out his share of her gallery. And Brenda wanted to take his kids to the other side of the world.

He just wanted some peace and quiet.

He was way above the highest treeline here, where the grass was short and boulders and rocks littered the landscape. He could hear the munching of sheep somewhere below him, and a slight wind was whistling in his ears and through his sweatshirt. Despite the sun, he was chilled. They were back to normal Scottish weather, that chill in the air that was always there.

There had been a meeting, of course – a complete debrief, supposedly. Question after question. Then Anderson had been taken into a smaller room with some thick-necked men, men in dark suits with bland faces, who did not introduce themselves. Special Branch, he
presumed. He had seen the pile of files and computer disks, all tracing the police career of Eric Moffat. They had placed in front of him photograph EC 2218. Twelve men playing a round of golf at a charity tournament in Turnberry, in 1993. Moffat and Howlett were there for the police. Morosov was standing smiling at the back, the respectable businessman. It was being mooted as their first contact. Anderson had been questioned about Moffat’s colleagues, and about his cases, especially those with ‘lost’ evidence or unsafe convictions. They were leaving no stone unturned. He had signed some very important-looking papers and had been glad to walk away.

He had been given a few days off. He was going to use those days to think about his future. And he was going to use the important-looking papers to justify his decision. No matter how good a shot Pettigrew was, and no matter how confident they were that they could keep their colleagues safe, it was Anderson himself who had been at the business end of Moffat’s knife. The way he saw it, he had been nearly killed by his boss’s inability to trust him with the bigger picture. All he’d had to work with was smoke and mirrors. He was a cop, not a bloody spy.

The only bright spot in the last few hours had been the highlight of the early part of the meeting – Mulholland turning up holding a small ice pack wrapped in a hanky over his nose, armed with a picture of Biggart at the fair. Fairbairn was only the pick-up, he postulated. He had taken the kid to the edge of the trees and passed her to Biggart before walking back to the pub. It fitted the timeline, and it explained why Biggart and his lawyer were so
helpful to Fairbairn, keeping him sweet. Until the lawyer had been called in for a wee chat with Wee Archie O’Donnell.

Mulholland had been very polite to Anderson, and very careful to avoid Costello. That was a story he was going to get to the bottom of.

The biggest Russian gang operating in Scotland had been broken. Pulling apart the white Transit van had uncovered a veritable archive of some of the biggest hits in the last five years – a mobile killing ground for Pinky and Perky. Pavel Sergeievich Morosov was dead, and Saskia had been sent back to her mother. Strathclyde police were now in possession of intelligence concerning the flow of red heroin and the new form of Rohypnol, R2, into the country. Mulholland had proved very useful in helping to translate the decoded text, and plans were no doubt being made to intercept and control the situation.

At that point, Matilda McQueen nearly opened her mouth but Batten had nudged her to be quiet. In simple terms, they told her over a pizza later, Special Branch now had the DVDs and knew the route they’d travelled. So, once they’d cracked the code, they would pick up where Morosov and Rosie had left off, and see how far up the chain of command they could get. The two sites for making the films – the flats and the hotel – were being watched. Morosov’s company, PSM, was trading as usual, but being monitored every minute of the day.

There was now a vacuum at the top of the tree, and Special Branch knew it wouldn’t be long until somebody tried to fill it. And came up against the O’Donnells and the McGregors on their home turf. Rosie, the cog it all
rotated round, had died because MacFadyean had died – and he had died because some journalist had decided to write a book and had set the whole house of cards slowly tumbling. Carruthers had become edgy, flicking back through his diaries, thinking about how Graham Hunter had died, about the night little Alessandro had been taken and his own possible part in events. It had been the money Carruthers was concerned about. Moffat had sweetened him, and maybe others too, with a payout once it was obvious the wee boy wasn’t coming back. Anderson could imagine that preying on Carruthers’ conscience, and MacFadyean smiling at the irony of it.

Then along came Simone Sangster to stir the hornets’ nest.

It was the why Anderson couldn’t understand. Was it seeing his control slip, after all those years of silence, that had prompted Moffat to murder his erstwhile colleagues? Anderson still couldn’t imagine the hold the incident had on them. Were they bound by the horror of it? Or by the subconscious fear that what happened to Purcie might happen to them? Or was it simply the discovery that the waterways and shafts in the glen were to be recommissioned? Perhaps Batten was right. Once a psychopath, always a psychopath. Anderson remembered the way Moffat’s old crew had greeted him. The man had had charm, had kept their loyalty. Any cop that popular must be a psycho, he decided.

His phone rang. It was O’Hare.

‘Hello, Prof. How much sleep have you had?’

‘About the same as you, I should imagine,’ the pathologist said grumpily. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t have been
home to bed yet. It’s not the sort of thing you go home and sleep soundly after. Anyway, I thought you’d like to be told that the markings on the bullet that killed Howlett match those on the bullet that killed Purcie on the Campsie Fells thirty-five years ago. Matilda’s comparison microscope proved that both bullets were fired from Wullie MacFadyean’s Lee–Enfield.’

Anderson sighed thoughtfully. ‘So, do we think Moffat put Purcie out on the far right flank of the search line, so he would walk straight into MacFadyean’s sights?’

‘It looks like it. We’ll never know exactly why. But Moffat probably knew that Purcie had come to realize that Hunter’s death hadn’t happened the way Moffat said it had, and that keeping silent served no purpose.’

After the Prof’s call, Anderson sat in the heather and cogitated for a while. Rosie and Wullie had been Morosov’s right-hand men. Rosie’s laptop, slowly being decoded, was revealing a horrific catalogue of crimes. Details of children targeted for trafficking. Details of flights for drug drops. Details of who was to die, and how. Yet it was apparent that Rosie had no idea who their real enemies were, and how close they were. Even when Richie burned Billy Biggart to death, she didn’t understand that he was an infiltrator, with access to all the Russians’ operations. Pinky and Perky had had some suspicion, and had attempted to beat information out of the boy, then dispose of him. Yet no matter how they tortured him, he had kept quiet about Libby.